Thursday, June 15, 2006
We arrived at about 8.05am local time, 8th of June at South Korea's Incheon International airport. It was a really uncomfortable 6 hour flight through out the whole midnight journey. South Korea's time is a head by 1 hour and would actually be 7.05am Singapore time.
Exchange of Local Currency to Korean WON. Unfortunately they only accept the US greenback, SGD is not recgonized.
The ambience of the airport is really nice and soothing, spacious and well-decorated interior, modern architectural designs, plenty of flora and fauna everywhere, disable-friendly amenities, and really really clean areas. The Koreans are really particular about cleanliness.
Interesting rotary door to prevent draft during cold weather.
So we step out into the open and it was cool and misty at a very comfortable 21 degrees Celsius. It's now Summer in Korea and temperatures haven't gone below 10 degrees yet. We're now at Incheon and it was an hours ride to Yongin, Gyeonggi-do. The transportation here are all left-handed drives, it was quite interesting. The first place we went to was Yongin Everland themepark.
The place is built on a piece of land similar to an island and is completely owned by Samsung, the history is that a long time ago, Samsung's founders, a Tycoon, bought this entire plot of land from the Korean government and built the Everland theme park on it. The place is really gigantic! Probably rivaling the size of Genting Highlands, the ambience was spacious and inviting and far more interesting than anything Singapore can ever dream to offer!
Everland is South Korea's largest theme park. Along with its main attractions, Everland also includes a zoo and a water park, known as Caribbean Bay. Everland is often compared to Disneyland by those who have visited both parks, as many cosider the architecture, scale, themes and atmosphere to be very similar.
Despite its being one-hundredth the size of Disney World, it is still a unique theme park in Korea. The resort focuses on the value of human beings and nature. Everland ranks eighth among the world's amusement parks in terms of the number of visitors.
As the country's first family theme park, Everland Resort sparked the leisure and service culture boom in the country. For about 20 years after its opening, Everland greatly contributed to raising the country's family leisure culture to a world-class level based on its pioneering spirit. In 1996, "Yongin Farmland" changed its brand identity to "Everland" with the goal of becoming a top-notch resort. As a result, the theme park has increasingly dedicated itself to serving visitors as a more pleasant and fun-filled resort.
I took lots of photos, and it is really big, about twenty times the size of Escape theme park? A favorite attraction here is the Mystery Mansion in which visitors can shoot at the ghosts. Anyway, one thing that I noticed consistently was that how do all the Korean service personnel remain happy? In a highly stressful environment like Singapore, being consistently happy would get you labeled as "mad", "insane" or "lost it". But the Korean service staff are constantly happy, waving at every visitor, Korean or otherwise and this is something really admirable. Their cheerfulness just makes you happy.
First we went to Zootopia, where we took a ferry bus into the safari ride were we could see animals just roaming about freely and Tigers and Lions living in harmony with each other, and we can see Ligers for the first time! Ligers are cross-breed from Lions and Tigers and they are sterile, (cannot reproduce further).
The place is really interesting, instead of seeing animals caged up like the Singapore zoological gardens, animals are allowed to roam freely and interact with each other. The bus has to go through something like a "air-lock" or a cage-lock where it is a double-gated junction that allows the bus to pass but prevents animals from escaping, remember "Jurassic park"? Yeah, that makes it all the more interesting.
The next place we went to was the Amazon water ride, they tried to simulate a level 1 white-water rafting experience in the Amazon, quite interesting though.
We could also play and touch all the animals, the sheep, the goats, seeing them bleat as they come to you is so cool!
Then we went to the Four seasons garden where we saw one of the most beautiful flowers ever! Colorful and happy flowers that make you just so happy.
After taking photos in the Four Seasons Garden which they tried to replicate the tulip fields in Holland.
I went for 2 rollercoaster rides, far more interesting anything that Singapore could ever offer! They did complete 360-degree loops, twists and turns with full-harness, a level 3 roller coaster. Even though it was short (a mere 1 and a half minute), it was rather enjoyable. Of the two, there was a suspended Roller-coaster and the double-loop and cork-screw coaster.
Due to time constraints we had to leave by 2.30pm. And next we went to Gyeonggi Korean Traditional Music Center, where they performed a dramatization of traditional wedding in Korea, dubbed - "A wedding in the snow".
Some Korean traditional music instruments.
Trying on the traditional Korean costume.
A comical drama combining traditional dance movements with modern dance, acrobatics, magic, and breathless percussions. Designed to introduce Korean traditional culture to outsiders, many parts of traditional Korean wedding procedure are faithfully reconstructed within the drama.
Choi-Jinsa, a Seoulite equivalent of Uncle Scrooge, is a notorious miser. He and his mischievous wife publically announce to have their daughter, Sun, married, with an underlying intention to gather presents from potential grooms. Sun, a tomboyish girl with a big heart, has no intention of getting married. On the day of the final competition for winning the bride, Choi-Jinsa dispels every candidate by offering him impossible tests when suddenly assassins attack their home and try to kidnap Sun. The entire family stand up to face the assassins...
When we went back outside, it was now 13deg, and it's summer! Imagine if it's winter =) how nice would that be.
Then it was another hour's bus ride for a sumptuous Korean dinner. The thing about Korean restaurants is that they don’t have seats, people sit on cushions on the floor and eat their meals on foot-high tables, usually cooking their own meals on steamboats installed into the tables. During the dinner, our tour-guide was telling us how Kimchi is made and stored in the soil.
Guess what? To spend the night, we headed to Yong Pyong Ski Resort! =) It's where Winter Sonata was filmed!
More pictures for day two. The night's temperature was 13 degrees.
12:46 AM
